Bits of Broken Glass in Soil?!

singlehouseholder

Am I the only person that regularly finds bits of broken glass in the soil? I'm fed up, I turn over the soil every coupla days but every time I go back there's more and more! How the hell does it get there? :mad:Its almost as if the earth is pushing up the glass when I think I've gorrit all more appears! Anyone else have glassy soil?

katholicos

We have quite large pieces of glass in the soil. When i moved here i was made all to aware that the previous tenants were savages. They had broken the windows in the house and buried the glass in the garden, they had also graffited the main bedroom the bathroom and the medium sized bedroom. They were odd to say the least. We dug out as much glass from the garden as we could (it was before i became suddely ill 10 years ago) and i just had grass put down in the garden. Now i have an interest ingardening, we're finding pieces of glass in every shovel full of soil. I am using raised beds as i can't dig the soil and get very breathless trying to get down to ground level to plant anything or prepare the earth for plants to be planted, but we have tried to add a bit of soil to the raised beds to mix with the compost and it is horrendous. some people are so inconsiderate. When we moved here my youngest was just turned 4 and there were used hyperdermic needles in the garden and used condoms and ugh, it was horrid. horrid.horrid. It fair does my head in that i am still coming across loads of crap from before my time here.

sabretoothtigger

Check the history of your area. Sometimes old tip land is built on. They built a supermarket on the old rubbish dump in our area but I suppose housing estates is possible too.
Almost everything will break down even plastic but glass is forever and any magnetic metal is reclaimed I guess

Even if thats not the case you should see most building sites, tons of rubbish all over the place. The cheapest companies will deliberately bury it 6 feet under

A._Badger

It may not be waste. I have found glass and old crockery in ancient gardens (my own, included, which is Tudor in origin) and I am sure that some of our forefathers used to throw broken glass and pottery onto the soil, in the belief that it deterred slugs and snails.

It's my impression that people were still doing this as recently as the 1940s.

Lotus-eater

How old is your house? Victorian and older houses often used the gardens as rubbish dumps, they had no where else to put it.
I'm not sure about the idea that gardeners used to put down glass as slug barriers, I find it hard to believe that a gardener would be that stupid and I haven't heard it before.

katiel

We've always put the amount of glass in our garden down to the presence once upon a time of Bell Farm, apparently one of the first to use bell jars to protect crops. This is probably totally wrong. I like the idea instead that Victorians used their gardens as tips - that would explain the quality of the "rockery" we were left
When my friend moved into her new build about 20 years ago she found her lawn was half grass/half horseradish. We definitely put that down to the house being built on the old farm land.

A._Badger

Lotus-eater wrote: »

How old is your house? Victorian and older houses often used the gardens as rubbish dumps, they had no where else to put it.
I'm not sure about the idea that gardeners used to put down glass as slug barriers, I find it hard to believe that a gardener would be that stupid and I haven't heard it before.

You will occasionally find bits of glass in the beds at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London. They weren't thrown there at random. Nor were their gardeners 'stupid'.

Lotus-eater

Do you not think it's stupid to use glass bits as slug barriers then?

I expect all the old victorian ink bottles that are found in gardens, whole and in bits, are there to keep cut flowers in?

I don't doubt there have been moments when a few, a very few, people have used broken glass as a slug barrier, but not I think in the majority of houses.

A._Badger

Lotus-eater wrote: »

Do you not think it's stupid to use glass bits as slug barriers then?

What I think is beside the point. The OP was wondering why so much of this stuff was in the ground. I was illuminating the subject with an explanation which you don't seem able to throw any light on: why, if you are right, similar material would be found in a botanical garden.

Lotus-eater wrote: »

I expect all the old victorian ink bottles that are found in gardens, whole and in bits, are there to keep cut flowers in?

I don't doubt there have been moments when a few, a very few, people have used broken glass as a slug barrier, but not I think in the majority of houses.

Well it's always interesting to know what people think.

Back on the subject, my previous house was built in 1923, a time when there were not only rubbish collections, but rather better ones than we have today. That garden, too, had bits of broken glass and crockery in the soil. It wasn't put there because the owner couldn't get rid of it any other way.

In fact, the disposal of unwanted broken domestic crockery and glassware would usually have been in the midden - which is the first place an archaeologist starts digging. If glass etc is in the beds and borders, it is not unreasonable to conclude it is there for a reason.

Gardeners have believed all sorts of strange things down the years (and many still do).

Suzy_M

Glass in soil probably from old greenhouses, cold frames or cloches from pre-plastic days when glass was the only suitable material.

Optimisticpair

A._Badger wrote: »

Back on the subject, my previous house was built in 1923, a time when there were not only rubbish collections, but rather better ones than we have today. That garden, too, had bits of broken glass and crockery in the soil. It wasn't put there because the owner couldn't get rid of it any other way.

In fact, the disposal of unwanted broken domestic crockery and glassware would usually have been in the midden - which is the first place an archaeologist starts digging. If glass etc is in the beds and borders, it is not unreasonable to conclude it is there for a reason.

Gardeners have believed all sorts of strange things down the years (and many still do).

Middens, aka rubbish heap, containing broken Victorian crockery and glass, often ended up being spread on nearby fields. Some escaped into the garden of Victorian houses. Fields later get built on and hence we find glass and blue and white pottery in post Victorian gardens.